Michael Ramos, San Bernardino County District Attorney, takes questions from the media during a press conference Monday March 25, 2013 where his office announced the filing of multiple charges against former SBIA developer Scot Spencer and Felice G. Luciano. ¬ Rick Sforza/Staff photographer

For the third time in the last two election cycles, San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael A. Ramos has been fined by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for improper campaign reporting practices.

Ramos, who has served as the county’s top prosecutor for the past 13 years, paid the commission, under a stipulated agreement, a fine of $5,000 on April 16 for failing to file a pre-election campaign statement on time and for failing to itemize on campaign finance forms credit card charges of $100 or more and totaling $14,025, the FPPC announced Monday.

Ramos’ treasurer, Marvin Reiter, was also accused of the same violations, but the $5,000 fine covered both his and Ramos’ infractions, FPPC spokesman Jay Wierenga said.

“While this was an oversight by my campaign treasurer noted by the FPPC in their statement of findings, I take full responsibility. That’s why I paid the fine immediately, rather than contesting it,” Ramos said in a statement Monday.

Ramos is one of seven cases from San Bernardino County, with proposed fines totaling $18,650, to be heard by the five-member Fair Political Practices Commission at its May 21 meeting. The commission will also consider proposed fines of $6,000 against the Rancho Cucamonga Professional Firefighters Association IAFF Local 2274 PAC; $3,000 and $1,500 against San Bernardino County Sheriff candidates Clifton L. Harris and Paul Schrader, respectively; $1,500 against county supervisor candidate Randolph Beasley; $1,500 against district attorney candidate Grover Merritt; and $150 against county Auditor/Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Larry Walker. All proposed fines stem from the 2014 election cycle.

For Ramos, it is not the first time he has failed to ensure that his campaign credit card charges were properly documented. In 2011, he paid the FPPC a $2,500 fine for failing to itemize credit charges of $100 or more and totaling $8,619 on his 2010 campaign finance statements. Prior to paying the fine, Ramos said in a statement to the press that while his credit card payments were disclosed, his campaign “failed to take the required extra step to itemize the expenditures.”

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and the FPPC’s first general counsel, from 1975 to 1983, said he was flabbergasted that Ramos was twice fined for the same violation.

“Of all the people who should be complying with the law, it should be the D.A.,” Stern said. “If I were a commissioner, I would go back and say double the fine,”

The maximum fine, per violation, that the FPPC could have imposed on Ramos and Reiter was $5,000.

In 2009, Ramos agreed to pay the FPPC $200 for failing to report on his statement of economic interest form a $10,000 payment he made to his wife for working on his campaign. Ramos attributed the infraction to a misunderstanding of state reporting guidelines. Although he reported the payment on his campaign finance 460 forms and on his tax forms, Ramos said at the time he did not know he was supposed to disclose the information on his statement of economic interests, known as a “Form 700.”

This time around, Reiter, attributed the failure to promptly file Ramos’ pre-election statement on a computer glitch, and was unable to get the matter resolved until after the filing deadline. As to the credit card charges, Reiter said Ramos provided him all the documents, but Reiter misplaced some of them during a move from his former office in San Bernardino to his new one in Redlands, according to the FPPC’s stipulation and decision order.

As to the other San Bernardino County cases the commission will consider on May 21, the Rancho Cucamonga Professional Firefighters Association IAFF Local 2274 PAC has been fined for failing to file two pre-election campaign statements on time, failing to timely disclose contributions on campaign statements, and failing to promptly disclose expenditures on a campaign statement.

Merritt, a veteran county prosecutor who ran against Ramos for district attorney in the last election, was fined $1,500 for receiving a $4,000 contribution, in the form of a cashier’s check, which was not drawn from the bank account of the contributor. Harris was fined $3,000 for making expenditures totaling $5,549 from a source other than the single, designated campaign bank account, and Schrader, the other candidate for sheriff in 2014, was fined $1,500 for accepting a $900 contribution in cash, according to the FPPC.

State law prohibits cash contributions of $100 or more being paid to a political candidate.

Beasley, who ran for supervisor of the county’s second supervisorial district in 2014 but lost to incumbent Janice Rutherford, was fined $1,500 for receiving cash loans totaling $8,200 for his campaign, and Walker was fined $150 for failing to timely file a late contribution report for a $1,000 contribution he received on May 2, 2014, according to the FPPC.

The commission, the final arbiter of the cases that go before it, typically approves the recommended proposals by its enforcement division, but in rare cases can request higher or lower fines, or reject the proposals outright, Wierenga said.

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.

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